3:2 Hornpipes

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Tootler
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 08:14 PM

Brian Peters,

I agree with you that we will never know for certain just how William Vickers and his contemporaries played these tunes, though I am sure scholars will exercise themselves with this. I can't help feeling however that the beaming of quavers in the Vickers MS is an attempt to indicate where the stress lies in the bar. Of course some of Vickers' contemporaries may have played the tunes differently. The Dusty Miller is interesting because while the first two strains are beamed in threes, the third strain is beamed in twos/fours.

Anahata had an interesting suggestion of an accompaniment pattern of

"A common 2 bar rhythm sequence , for instance:
2 2 2 | 1 2 1 2 |"

The crotchet-minim pattern implied in the second bar is quite common in renaissance music. Galliards in particular show a variety of rhythmic shifts. The underlying pattern is usually minim-crotchet with shifts to crotchet-minim or to three minims. I wonder if, and this is pure speculation, what we have with some 3/2 hornpipes is a relic of a rhythmic structure which was once common but has elsewhere disappeared. OTOH, other 3/2 hornpipes are clearly three in a bar throughout.

Of course at the end of the day, it is a matter of personal judgment when playing how to place the stress for best musical effect.

To respond to Dazbo, the underlying three in a bar is quite slow although the tunes often sound much quicker because the basic minim pulse is usually broken up into shorter length notes. There is a Purcell Hornpipe I play with a recorder group where the top line is largely quavers and semi-quavers while the lower parts are an accompaniment in mostly minims and crotchets. Playing one of the lower parts is surprisingly tricky because you are tempted not to hold the notes on long enough, as the underlying slow three is masked by all the activity on the top line. I usually cheat and count the bars in six in my head. That way I keep time better.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 02:41 PM

Dazbo: the most basic way to get a 3/2 rhythm is to chant(or sing):
You shall have a fishy
On a little dishy
You shall have a fishy
When the boat comes in

(unless you slow up the "boat comes" as some singers do, which adds an extra beat at the end).
or alternatively

Buy Boom besoms
Buy them when they're new
Buy broom besoms
Better never grew

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 01:33 PM

As far as I know, Matt Seattle , Border piper and of Dragonfly Music did the transcriptions for FARNE. He also published the Vickers MS in 1987, as The Great Northern Tune Book. Its out of print now, but negotiations are ongoing to produce a new edition.

3/2 hornpipes are still a regular feature of Northumbrian pipers' repertoire, with or without variations. Vickers contains quite a few which can be played on modern pipes (with keys), as well as the old favourites such as Berwick Johnny / Billy; (Apprentice) Lads of Alnwick; and All the night I lay wi' Jockey / If ye will not rock it, let it lie and blare.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Dazbo
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 08:22 AM

That penultimate sentence should read:

I would expect to hear in a tune with a 3:2 time signature.

I wonder now whether Vickers (or whoever transcribed it) on the Farne site that Brian and Tootler discussed above had the same confusion over the time signature as I have.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:42 AM

Dazbo - a waltz has strong beat on first best of a bar - it is customarily only in 3/4 - others must be something different!

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Dazbo
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:11 AM

Anahata, you said "In fact you could say they have 6 beats": this is the confusion that lead to my original question about the time signature. Since my last post I have found a website with the classification:

Simple triple ("Waltz time")
3/2 = 3 minims per bar
3/4 = 3 crochets per bar
3/8 = 3 quavers per bar

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Neil_Hawes/th">here

Of course I'm aware that just because it's on a web page it doesn't make it true:-)

Whilst I whole-heartedly agree with your comments on the differences between waltzes and mazurkas (I can't recall any minuets at the moment) They both display a definite 3 beats in a bar which is what, from my ignorance, I would expect to hear in a tune with a 3:2 hornpipe.

I shall now go off and learn the lessons that Brian has taught me and ignore my confusion over the time signature:-)

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: treewind
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 02:04 PM

Do you know the Roaring Hornpipe?
It's certainly a version of the Rowling/Rolling hornpipe, though I believe it's often played in a dotted rhythm, making it a nice partner for Shreds and Patches, which is of course a 20th century work by John Kirkpatrick.

Anahata

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:27 PM

Dr Price: would your Welsh "Roaring Hornpipe" bear any structural or melodic connection with tunes known as the "Rolling" and "Rowling " Hornpipes known in English tunebooks of a similar era? Is this one tune? Or perhaps a genre of tunes?

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: treewind
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 11:13 AM

Dazbo, you wouldn't expect a 3/2 hornpipe to sound like a Waltz or Mazurka mainly because it's too slow, and because the beats are subdivided so much. In fact you could say they have 6 beats, but if you write 6/4 that's usually taken as meaning 3 + 3, and 3/2 hornpipes are much more like 2 + 2 + 2.

In general, all tunes in the same time signature don't sound like each other and aren't interchangeable for dance purposes, or at least they don't work so well, because there are numerous differences like how each beat is emphasised, or in the grouping of multi-bar phrases.
For example, even at the same speed, a Waltz, a Mazurka and a Minuet are all in 3/4 but with experience you can tell which is which because of those differences. Some are:

* Waltz - strong emphasis on 1st beat, secondary emphasis on third beat
* Mazurka - end of 4 and 8 bar phrases have a strong 2nd beat, tend to use dotted rhythm like hornpipes (not always).
* Minuet - groups of 2 bars, 2 bars, 4 bars

These characteristics don't necessarily contradict, which is why sometimes you can use one type of tune in place of the other.

Now look at polkas, reels, rants, marches and hornpipes and work out why you can usually tell them apart even though they're all in 4/4. And then work out why some of those are interchangeable and others aren't. I don't know all the answers but it's an important part of being a good dance musician.

Anahata
(yes, I know polkas and marches are often written in 2/2 or 2/4)

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: fiddler
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 09:58 AM

There are still some 3/2 hornpipes known.

I know one was taught at a workshop in Bristol about 3 years ago - thats when I first fell in love with the 3/2s generally.

The music hall suggestion was an intersting aside as lots of our current clog came or was kept alive and developed in teh music hall!

That may be where we find some answers - if anyone feels like some research!

Andy

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 09:57 AM

My playing experience tells me that the difference (apart from the longer beat length) is in the fact that all three beats in 3:2 are stressed more or less equally with perhaps some extra emphasis on the first, but without that heavy-on-the-one-beat oom-pah-pah rhythm you get with a waltz. More like Oom Oom Oom, in fact. Don't ask me about the theory, though.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Dazbo
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 09:18 AM

Thanks all for your very interesting comments about how you'd play 3:2 hornpipes. No one though has answered my main question (unless I've been too dense to understand it) about the theoretical meaning of the time signature. That is three beats to a bar which, to my mind, would sound similar to a waltz or mazurka. None of the music theory I've found on the net mentions 3:2.

Thanks for the reminder of what you'd already told me Brian, as I said higher up this thread I fully intend to get back to the Cobbler's Hornpipe for the next meeting I can get to.

It also seems strange to me that no one really knows what the dances were like. I wonder if the dances morphed into something else when 3:2 hornpipes became less popular?

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Mick Tems
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 09:10 AM

I have two 3/2 Welsh hornpipes, Y Gwr A'i Farch (The Man And His Horse) and The Roaring Hornpipe, an acrobatic feat of musicianship which was published in the Llangadfan Dances c. 1770. (Llangadfan is a little village, about 15 miles west of Welshpool on the A458.) Y Gwr A'i Farch crops up in the Edward Jones collection (1784 onwards.) Jones (Bardd y Brenin, Harper to the King) describes it as accompanying a North Wales dance for five dancers, but does not give details.

In his 1987 book Tro Llaw, a collection of 200 Welsh hornpipes published by the National Library Of Wales, the harper Robin Huw Bowen says: "Originally, the Hornpipe was a tune in 3/2 or 6/4 time. It was considered to be very English rhythm in the 17th and 18th centuries. At that time the word 'hornpipe' was not for any other dance tune. In the old collections, however, there was also a type of tune in common time, and this was recognised as Scottish. By the end of the 18th century, it began to be referred to as a 'double hornpipe', and this is most likely to have been the forefather of the type of tune called 'hornpipe' since then.

"There never was any essential connection between the hornpipe and the hornpipe and the sailors' world. The term was used to mean any solo step dance (just as does 'jig' in the Morris tradition today), whatever the tune and rhythm might be. This was greatly strengthened in the theatres of the 18th century by the stage tradition of the 'character-dance', which was more pantomimic than traditional."

Incidentally, there are a lot of beautiful 3/2 Hanter-dro dances from the Vannes region in Brittany. It would be a little far-fetched to call these hornpipes - but Olly and I try to combine The Roaring Hornpipe and Jeune Fille De La Rose, which makes an interesting and absorbing exercise!

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 07:13 AM

Thanks, Tootler, for directing me to the Vickers MS on the FARNE site. As a result I realise for the first time that the four-part version of "Rusty Gulley" I recorded a few years ago having found it in Jamie Knowles' "Northern Frisk" book is in fact a compilation of "Risty Gulley" and "Bustey Gulley".

However, I don't think it's helpful to describe the Vickers transcription as "alternate bars of 3/4 and 6/8", as the FARNE compilers have done. As the description on the site concedes, there's no reason to suppose that Vickers actually played it like that. Looking on the same page of the MS at his "Dusty Miller", which is also barred in 6:8, you can't help wondering whether he actually played this as a jig or - like his near-contemporary Joseph Kershaw (and also John Clare) - as a triple hornpipe barred in 3:2. What I'm suggesting is that Vickers simply wasn't familiar with the 3:2 time signature and was having difficulty expressing the triple hornpipe within the limits of his own music theory. But someone who knows more about Vickers than I do might care to refute this.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Tootler
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:17 PM

Tootler, is "Rusty Gully" actually written as alternating bars of 3:4 and 6:8 in the Vickers MS, or just in the Folkworks Session Collection?

I had a look on the Farne Website.

The time signature is actually just 6/8 but the quavers are beamed in such a way as to make it clear that the bars alternate between 3/4 and 6/8. In the odd numbered bars, the quavers are beamed either in 4's or pairs (depending whether there are semiquavers in the bar) in the even numbered bars they are beamed in threes. I interpret that as he is saying that the odd numbered bars should be played with three crotchet beats and the even numbered bars should be played with two dotted crotchet beats.

The next tune in the MS also shows the same sort of pattern (Interestingly called "Busty Gulley" - Vickers Spells Rusty Gulley "Risty Gulley"). A time signature of 6/8 with alternating bars of 3/4 & 6/8 in the A part and the first three bars of the B part in 3/4 with the final one in 6/8. I also looked up "Go to Berwick Johnny" and this had a time signature of 6/8 with the quavers beamed in 2s and 4s throughout suggesting it should be played throughout in triple time.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:06 PM

I realise this wasn't what Greg meant (and also that I've probably told you this already in person, Darren), but when playing triple hornpipes on *melodeon* I'd avoid playing oom-pahs on the left hand. They tend to level out all the syncopation that makes these tunes so interesting. Anahata's scheme (2 2 2 / 1 2 1 2) is a good illustration of the typical syncopation, with the minim in the melody straddling the first and second of the three beats in every alternate bar. It sounds effective if, in the syncopated bars, you stress the first minim, i.e. the offbeat - but oom-pah basses don't really allow you to do that. Better to devise a cross-rowed right-hand fingering scheme so that you can play sustained or stabbed chords on the left hand. Is this making any sense? If not, remind me to go through it at the next Sheffield tutorial session.

Tootler, is "Rusty Gully" actually written as alternating bars of 3:4 and 6:8 in the Vickers MS, or just in the Folkworks Session Collection? I had the idea that was Alistair Anderson's way of playing it.

And since everyone else is shamelessly plugging their merchandise, I should point out that every one of the 8 CDs I've recorded in solo, duo and dance band incarnations (but excluding the Rocky Mountain Ploughboys whose country / old-timey / rock'n'roll repertoire curiously didn't feature any 3:2) includes at least one and usually more triple hornpipes. Go here to find out more. And buy Greg's "The Beggar Boy" while you're about it.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: treewind
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 01:33 PM

To give its full title: "Geld Him, Lasses, Geld Him!" from James Oswald's "Pocket companion".
Also Track 3 on our CD Floating Verses, in an arrangement by Alastair Anderson, followed by a Purcell Hornpipe (our own arrangement).

If you ask very nicely I might put an MP3 clip on the site. You can buy the CD of course (follow the link for instructions), but if all you want is 3/2 hornpipes those are the only ones on the album.

(end of blatant plug)
Anahata

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Scoville
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 01:20 PM

Geld Him Lasses

Wait . . . seriously?

That's officially the scariest tune title ever.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 01:00 PM

On a CD called Romany Yog, produced by the Gordon Boswell Romany Museum in Lincolnshire, there is an interesting experiment with 3/2 rhythms. Tom Walsh plays the Old Lancaster Hornpipe on a melodeon while Amos Muller step-dances. Whether this bears any close relationship to what they did to the tune 200 years ago is anyone's guess, but it sounds fine( and fun) to me.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Mo the caller
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 07:48 AM

Would the triple hornpipe be like the Cumbrian clog dance, where you dance a reel of three, then the middle person does some fancy steps facing one partner, then the other; repeat the reel, some different steps, etc.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Dazbo
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 03:35 AM

Cheers for the info. Cobbler's hornpipe by EC and the RC is one of my favourite tunes which I must finish off learning (having put it on the back burner months ago).

I'm sure John Kirkpatrick and his wife (sorry I've forgotten her name) demonstrated a (complicated but good looking) couple dance for a 3:2 hornpipe at an Anchor ceilidh last summer but perhaps I'm mis-remembering it.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 05:00 PM

Or the Anne Summers one step

er, sorry

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:27 PM

Dunno, Greg. That's all it said. Though I took it to be wo women and a bloke.
Though I do know a 3/2 triple hornpipe tune called The Three Footed Chestnut.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:12 PM

Countess Richard's quote about a triple hornpipe is I think almost certainly about three women dancing a modern 4/4(sailors') hornpipe, and not about the earlier three-to-a-bar kind.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 03:33 PM

Lots of 3/2 tunes appeared in published dance collections (24 for the year xxxx)and some from recognised composers for example -

Handel, Hornpipe from the Water Music
Jumpers Chase, Walsh 1714
Love in a Hop Yard, Kynaston 1717
Anna Maria, 1698
Barham Down, 1701
Dick's Maggot, 1703
Purcell, The Hole in the Wall, 1698
Purcell, Siege of Limerick, 1698

They all have the underlying 1,2,3 strong beats but often with sub-divisions.

All around the 1700 mark but there were none in first edition playford in 1651.

Howard Mitchell

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 12:36 PM

In his study of the music hall The Early Doors, Harold Scott notes that 'a triple hornpipe was danced by Goodwin, Miss Ward and Miss Lever' but no further details of the dance are revealed. So it may have been a dance for three, for those with three feet or the time signature. Who knows?

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 12:18 PM

Something like this is surely not in a straight 3/2? The syncopation you get in the even-numbered bars suggests a longer-than-one-bar metric cycle like the one Tootler described, or in this case more like the metric cycles of Arab music.

X:2
T:Old Age and Young
S:Dow MS, fiddle part, 1745
N:written as 6/4 in MS
N:first note in bar 2 of third section is missing in MS, my guess
N:third note in bar 3 of third section is missing in MS, my guess
M:3/2
L:1/4
Q:1/2=100 % my guess
K:GDor
G2 B>c d(c/B/)|A FF c A(G/F/) |G2 B>c d(c/B/)|A G2 g A(G/F/) :|
ga gG A2    |F f2 F A/B/c/A/|g>a gG A2    |G g2 G A/B/c/A/:|
G>A GG, B,2    |G, D2 B AG/F/   |G>A GG, B,2    |D g2 B AG/F/   :|

Something specific must have happened in the dance at those syncopations, like a hop in the air.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 11:59 AM

I guess 'Hornpipe' has become the label for those classic Soldiers Joy / Captain Pugwash tunes. Did the label for the 3/2 and other dance tunes Hornpipe simply imply a tune played on a horn or perhaps a pipe rather than a particular rhythm of dance?

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 10:08 AM

Re: Les in Chorlton's query re 3/2 and Irish Hornpipes. Irish hornpipes are much like English, Scottish and Welsh hornpipes. 4/4 (or cut-time 2/2) tunes,8 bars played AABB with the distinctive diddle didle diddle diddle om pom pom last two bars. Somtimes with the quavers played evenly(and faster), sometimes with the first quaver longer than the second and played a bit slower. These tunes originated (possibly in northern England or southern Scotland, and thence to Ireland but nobody really knows).TYhey start appearing in collections from the early 1700's, though not generally called hornpipes to start with.
   Up till about 1750 the 3/2 hornpipe predominated (Cheshire/Lancashire Derbyshire seems to have been a key area, but they were very widespread). The basic tune was a 4-bar 3/2 main theme, followed by variations(it is safe to assume that the musicians would have made up the variuations, like jazz players). After 1750 more and more of the modern 4/4 ones start appearing(sometimes written in 2/4), and by 1850 it is quite rare to find many in manuscript tune books, apart a few NE pipe tunes like "Go to Berwick Johnny". Joseph Kershaw, the mid 19th century Pennine Lancashire fiddler, was notable in having a few of the old tunes in his repertoire.
    The heyday of the modern type of hornpipe was from 1800 on, peaking in the 1850's very roughly. James Hill the Newcastle virtuoso was the archetypal hornpipe player and composer, but there were thousands of others. I don't think we have the names of many early 3/2 players: Old Hale was a Derbyshire piper notable enough to have his picture produced over the sheet music of one of his hornpipes(this was in the 1600's).

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 09:50 AM

treewind/anahata is I'm sure quite right when he says a syncopated accompaniment is appropriate for these tunes, which are frequently highly syncopated themselves. But in explaining the basic rhythms that the syncopations sit on top of, I think ompah ompah ompah is the easiest satarting position. That gives the three main beats, each subdivided into two crotchets. And the crotchets subdivide into quavers for the twiddly bits. If 3/2 is unfamiliar to you, think of a conventional two beat hornpipe rhythm, eg the fists bar of Soldires Joy, written out in 4/4 (or 2/2) time. You get two minims to the bar, ie ompah ompah. Each om and pah subdivides, so the whoile bar actually goes (diddle diddle diddle diddle) That's your modern hornpipe. The old 3/2 adds one more ompah to make the three beats in the bar, and when you are playing the kind of diddly variations that the 3/2 hornpipes go into (known as "divisions" in the old days) you get a bar cominjg out as (diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle). In terestingly, the alternation between straight and syncopated bars referred to by an earlier posater also turns up in early versions of the two beat hornipea. For example, I have seen early version of |Soldiers Joy ehibiting exacly this effect. Unfortunately I cant give a written out musical example, but the rhythm of the first four bars (in 4/4) would be (diddlediddle diddle diddle)(ompa-diddle)(diddle diddle diddle diddle)(ompah-diddle). Which is an interesting mirror of the 3/2 rhythm of say the Old Lancashire or Lancaster Hornpipe.
    The nature of the dance, and indeed the traditional way of playing this rhythm, has been largely lost (and revived) in most of England, though some remnants remain in Northumbrian piping tradition, and of course in many songs. However,the rhythm thrives in related forms in other cultures, and listening to traditional examples is easy. Swedish fiddle tunes, for example. Flamenco guitar(the rhythm is ubiquitous in southern Spain). All the Kurdish musuicians I know habuitually play in it, and I think it is common in Arab anmd Turkish music as well. I was having a bop to a Zimbabwean guitar band recently and was slightly surprised to note that one of its rockier numbers was in fact in a fast 3/2. The traditional Englisg dance has been the subject of much speculation, particulaly as contemporary (17th century) accounts refer to it as a round celebratory dance as well as a solo show-off thing. IMy guess it was both: many cultures have dances where all the people get in a circle and do basic steps to a wild rhythm , and individuals take turns to jump into the ring and do the spectacular stuff. This, I imagine, was the hot climax of a Lancashire dance at the time, out in any convenient open space with a bagpiper or fiddler.
   I think the talk of alternating bars of 3/2 and 6/4 that Tootler discusses earlier is a bit of a red herring. The three note run down to the first beat of the Old Lancastere Hornpipe, for example, seems to me to be the last three beats of a 3/2 bar, with no suggestion of a rhythm change. A syncopation, possibly, but on top of the basic beat: in no way a change of that beat. Cajun tunes often have a three note lead in run,for example, but there is no rhythm change implied.
    The nice thing about tackling Thomas Marsden's c 1700 book of Lancashire Hornpipes, and any number of other contemporary publications, is the complete and total lack of any traditional recordings of the music. So we are all free to do exactly as we like, and nobody whatsover can claim any authority for being righter than anyone else. Go to it, chaps and chapesses. This is a no-go area for the legendary folk police.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 09:35 AM

Irish hornpipes are generally in common time: 4/4.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 09:27 AM

How does a 3/2 Hornpipe differ from an Irish Hornpipe

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: fiddler
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 08:44 AM

There are some nice clog dances to 3/2 hornpipes.

Some very nice tunes too.

We play a few but no one dances the hornpipes to them!

Sad

Andy

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Tootler
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 08:28 AM

Some 3/2 hornpipes seem to have alternating bars in 3/2 and 6/4 even if they are written as 3/2 tunes throughout.

The Folkworks Session Collection includes the example of Rusty Gully which is actually written in the 19th Century William Vickers collection with alternating bars in 3/4 and 6/8 (all note values halved). The Old Lancashire Hornpipe which Spiers and Boden have recorded also seems to follow this pattern with an opening half bar in 6/4 followed by 3/2 6/4 etc with a closing half bar of 6/4 in each section.

Playing the tunes in this way gives them a definite rhythmic lift.

OTOH, The Lads of Alnwick works best played as 3/2 throughout.

It would be interesting if anyone were able to recover dances that were danced to these tunes as it would tell us a lot more about how they should be played.

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 08:07 AM

The complete Dancing Master, c/o Manchester Central ref. has lots of these beasts. I am no musician but can extract jigs, hornpipes and reels from the dots given time but 3/2s and 6/4s seem to hide their tunes somehow. How do they stand with 12/8? I think Irish slides are 12/8.

Perhaps working back from a couple learned fro ear would give the basic shape of the rhythm?

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: treewind
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 07:00 AM

I prefer a more syncopated accompaniment that follows the tune, and give them some shape in two bar phrases 3/2's often work in two bar phrases, so much so that I'm sure the dance steps that go with them did the same.

A common 2 bar rhythm sequence , for instance:
2 2 2 | 1 2 1 2 | or
2 2 2 | 1 2 1 1 1 |

That's numbers of crotchets per beat. It works well for the Old Lancaster Hornpipe, Dusty Miller/Rusty Gulley, Geld Him Lasses, two of Purcell's that I can think of, etc.
Really that sort of tune doesn't work with a simple oom-pah accompaniment.

There's another sort of 3/2/ hornpipe that has less of a syncopated rhythm and lots of quavers in it, that does work better with three omm-pahs per bar. Tunes like the Rowling Hornpipe, The Red Lion and The Tumblers. Though they are also written in 3/2 I'm sure there's a distinct different dance for these.

Greg's the expert - if you're still reading - are there really two types of 3/2 hornpipe, are they regional variations or different dance tunes, or is there a whole spectrum of usage like polkas/rants/hornpipes/reels that are somewhat interchangeable?

Anahata
(I don't think much is known about the dances, sadly)

Subject: RE: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 06:12 AM

Ompah ompah ompah is exactly right for 3/2, Dazbo. There are three minims(main beats) in the bar of a 3/2 hornpipe, and each minim is divided into two crotchets(om and pah, as it were). 6/4 would be ompahpah ompahpah, quite different. (6/4 is not really much different from two bars of 3/4).
For excellent examples of English 3/2 hornipes, may I recommend "The Beaggar Boy of the North", Greg Stephens and Crookfinger Jack, Harbourtown HARCD051. It is a recent CD reissue of the 1978 Fellside LP of NW English instrumental music, without which no decent record collection could be considered complete. For a more recent example of good 3/2 hornpipe playing, Eliza Carthy and the Ratcatchers play a very splendid Cobbler's Hornpipe on "Rough Music".

Subject: 3:2 Hornpipes
From: Dazbo
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 06:01 AM

There are quite a lot of really good 3:2 hornpipes out there (at least they seem to be coming into the repatoire in English sessions more and more) but I'm a bit puzzled.

To my (very basic understanding of musical theory) a 3:2 hornpipe should be three (half beat/minim?) beats to the bar, so a simple accompaniament would be om-pah-pah. However they seem to be played more as 6:4 (om-pah om-pah om-pah). Which is correct (as far as musical theory goes)?

How would you (do you) play 3:2 hornpipes?